Right Message Wrong Addressee

Sometimes my brain gets a little idea        

so I struggle and query its sources.

I dig a little here and dig a little there

but can't seem to come up with more.

 

Perhaps it floated from a foreign place

like a bottle with a message on the shore

maybe it was meant for somebody smarter

or maybe my neighbor next door.

 

It matters not how I go about it

nor how  I try to express it.

It comes right down to the same old thing

Right message, wrong addressee.

 

-Joy S. Barefoot

Ear of the Beholder

 

 

Let me listen to the sermon

with an open heart and mind

to gather tiny nuggets

of wisdom I may find.

 

In the preacher’s words and phrases,

it’s amazing what I hear

in sermons that are meant

for someone else’s ear!

-Joy S. Barefoot

Friday Nights in a Dry County

I remember Papa

when he called Smith’s Taxi Stand

“222, operator”

then a taxi, he’d demand.

 

Friday nights, I’d watch him.

He’d be dressed up, fit to kill.

He’d wink at the taxi driver,

saying, “Take me to Baptist Hill!”

 -Joy S. Barefoot

 

(This just happened to be what locals called the "Bootleg" area in the 1940s where I grew up)

The Chair's Dilemma

The chair got tired of being sat on

by fat and boney people.

He told the woodman building chairs,

“I’d rather be a steeple.”

 

The woodman observed the waiting chair

and said, “If I make you a steeple,

then you’ll be getting your bell rung

by fat and boney people!”

 -Joy S. Barefoot

It Isn’t Me

I am not the poem, can’t you see.
‘though I speak with “I”, it isn’t me.

My thoughts, my hand, in time and space
perhaps in some remembered place;

perhaps the “I” when I was five
or the “I” the day I came alive

or the weakened child with braided hair

who loved the grove and open air.

The world turns daily on its own

another “I” with every dawn.

Perhaps ‘twas I, the day I said it

but by tomorrow, I might regret it.

I know you think 'twas I who wrote it   
I understand, and that's well-noted,

but here I am and you can see
‘though I speak with I, it isn’t me.


-Joy S. Barefoot 

Reminiscing (Moments in Time)

If I had the gift of time
and could hold it in my hand
I'd stretch out the moments
of glorious bliss
rewinding, again and again.

I'd gather moments of pleasure;

each tiny remnant of joy;

I'd stop the hands

on these moments in time,

rewinding again and again.

 

But time is not meant to be captured.

I can't hold it in my hand;

can't capture a single past

moment of bliss;

can't live it over again.

 

So I will gather the treasures

as they're gifted along my way;

I will taste them, and try them

and relish their sweetness

to own them, again and again.

-Joy S. Barefoot 

 

 

Fear

No one ever told me

I couldn’t

but no one ever told me

I could

so

I didn’t.

I tried and tried

but I couldn’t.

-Joy S. Barefoot

Red Boots

Red Boots

     Joy S. Barefoot

I wanted red boots,
red rubber boots
like the other girls wore
when I was six, or seven;
wonderful boots,
smacking mud puddles,
boots with soft
fuzzy white linings
rolled over
and hugging pale
winter legs.

I wore black galoshes.

My chafed legs
and damp feet
resented
those red boots
the other girls wore
when I was six, or seven.

When I was older

I had red boots,
but it was not a time
for red boots.

The Shoe Psychiatrist of Taos (version one)

A tiny alcove

where eagles soar

across a blue sky.

 . . . Hand painted?

Smiling, and dismissing

our unspoken question,

“Wallpaper” he said.

“Got it from the internet.”

He moves nimbly about the space

as he sells shoes,

gives compliments

and flirts innocently.

At the counter

in the next room

his sandaled wife

nibbles her homemade soup

and reaps the rewards

from this kind

and generous man.

An old woman and her daughter

leave the eagle aerie,

wearing new sandals,

a brighter spring in their step

and feeling a spirit

to match that

of the soaring eagle.

-Joy S. Barefoot, 2007

Little Ostrich Skin Shoes

Little Ostrich Skin Shoes

                               -Joy S. Barefoot

 

I bought new shoes, fashioned of ostrich skin;

dyed the color of ground mustard seed;

pretty shoes, with tiny heels

looking sharp on my feet.

They matched some of the colors

in the print of swirling Viking ships

encircling and swishing

about my freshly shaven legs

Shoes, a perfect accent

for that expensive sundress from Jelleff's

at Seven Corners.

It took a lot of my teacher's check

to buy those shoes;

shoes that clicked off

down that hospital hall,

leading my Mama to see her Papa.

 

“You look like you own this place”,

Mama said to me

as I clicked

those snappy little ostrich skin shoes

down the hall

of the Floyd County, Georgia hospital.

Mama was proud of me.